


Dear Diary

by fandomfan



Category: Black Sails
Genre: FlintHamilton, Future Fic, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Truest Loves Make for Good Husbands, Tumblr Prompt, Writing Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 00:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13019673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomfan/pseuds/fandomfan
Summary: James and Thomas have found their well-earned peace, but Captain Flint may still be able to contribute something of value.





	Dear Diary

**Author's Note:**

> For [Lena_221b](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lena_221b/profile)'s prompting me from a Tumblr writing prompt list:  
>  _11\. "Dear Diary, ..." and Flinthamilton_
> 
> And this was born.

In the end, they return to the house on New Providence.

Where else for he and Thomas to make their home than where he and Miranda once did the same?

Oh, they wait a fair few years before returning, but in the end, James wants to be with Thomas in the only place they'll ever have any trace of her to hold close. Their lady. It is the only way he can think to truly have peace, to make things right with Thomas and with himself and with the shade of their lost beloved.

The house is a ruin, of course. It takes months to clear the charred timbers and buy sap-new ones and construct what ends up as a much simpler house than once stood on that spot. James is no stranger to splinters and pine tar, and Thomas has learned to labor in their years apart, but they are neither of them architects.

It's during the reconstruction phase that they discover, to James's surprise and Thomas's delight, that the earthen cellar beneath the house is more or less intact. Its provisions are all beyond spoilt by this point, but there are books and papers safely preserved in tight-sealed sea chests that James has to physically drag Thomas away from, lest he sleep in the damp space and keep James from his accustomed nightly bedsport. Yes, they are sleeping in a ragged lean-to in the clearing, and yes, the neighbours are closer than one might wish, but there is fun in needing to stay quiet, and after a decade largely dormant, James's appetite for carnality has reawakened with devoted ferocity.

"Thomas," he calls down into the damp earth walls on a night when he faces this very vexing situation.

There is no response from below. Thomas has been down there for at least two hours in the dusky, warm twilight.

"I am fairly sure you'll enjoy the proposition I'd like to make you, only it's not something I'll be shouting down into that hole."

Nothing.

Blast. James reluctantly descends into the cellar, dim and dank and far too reminiscent of some of the more unpleasant bilges he's had occasion to know.

Thomas is reading. He's seated on a roughhewn stool with a candle in a wall niche beside him. The loamy walls absorb the light so it barely fills the space, instead choosing to cluster in a corona around Thomas's grey-golden head as though irresistibly drawn to stay near him. James cannot fault the flame for its choice.

"What have you got there that keeps you from me?" he asks, drawing near himself and resting one hand at the join of Thomas's neck and shoulder.

Thomas looks up at him, blinking in bewilderment. James bites down on a smile as his lover reorients to their surroundings.

"Hmm?" Thomas asks, then must replay James's words in his mind, for he smiles with a hint of Hamilton mischief and replies, "Nothing can keep me from you."

He tips his head backwards to look up at James, upside-down and fond as anything. James bends and lays a small kiss on Thomas's brow, then his nose, then his chin, then reversing course to his lips. Thomas hums happily into their joined, inverted mouths.

James straightens and peers down into Thomas's lap, asking again, "What can you have found down here that's been keeping you all this time?"

Thomas... can it be possible? Yes! Thomas flushes rosy along the back of his neck.

James's curiosity is piqued, and yet more still when he realizes the book Thomas holds is a volume of his own Captain's logs from the early years aboard _The Walrus_.

He raises one quizzical eyebrow at Thomas, pink as any guilty schoolboy on his stool.

"If I don't miss my guess, that's about 1708 you've got there," he moves round to face Thomas and picks the book up from him. Only to discover that...

"Thomas, why ever does reading the details of prizes I took more than a dozen years ago make you hard?”

The man in question glows even brighter red, and James adores him for it.

“It's hardly 'Dear Diary, let me recount today's virile bout of half-nude piratical wrestling about the decks'. It was a rather insalubrious time, what with a ship full of men sweating and bleeding and shitting and puking in close quarters. Hardly what I’d call an enticement to—“

“Stop!” Thomas interjects, laughing. “I beg you, if you’d like anything to do with my cockstand tonight, please stop, for it is greatly endangered."

James puts the log down on the packed dirt floor and uses both hands to hold Thomas's face so he cannot look away, abashed. "I've no interest in endangering your lovely cockstand. On the contrary, I'm quite fond of the greedy fellow." Thomas snorts inelegantly. "Only I cannot figure why he is visiting us at this particular moment in this particular place."

And now Thomas sighs and rolls his eyes and tugs his head out of James's hands to mutter, very low in the very dim light, "I've always quite fancied Captain Flint."

James is... well... that's... what?

"What?"

Thomas groans and covers his flushed face with two hands that no one would mistake for a gentleman's. "It's true. You've discovered my secret, you dreadful brute."

James can't help himself. He laughs. It begins as a single disbelieving snort, but once the lid is off, he cannot stop. He falls to the side and guffaws into the dirt. There are tears in his eyes. His stomach aches with it.

Thomas grumbles and moans, "Dear God, may the earth open up and swallow me right this instant."

"No," James wheezes through his laughter. "No, certainly not that. Not before I hear the rest of this." He attempts to control himself, patting up at Thomas's knee in what he hopes is a reassuring manner.

Thomas uncovers one baleful eye to stare down at him in petulant silence.

"Come–" James swallows a chuckle. "Come now." He breathes deep, in and out once, and sits up again. To think, he used to be so good at controlling his face. "Tell me about this fancy of yours."

"Oh no!" Thomas says, muffled into his palms. "Absolutely not. Not now you've shown me what horrid mockery will surely follow."

James reaches up and pulls Thomas's hands down from his face and holds them. By all the sea gods round all the great wide world, he loves this man. He kisses into one of Thomas's calloused palms, then the other. "I swear I'll be good," he says. "I really do want to know," and he tries to look his earnest James McGraw best.

It's a look Thomas has never once been able to withstand, and now's no exception.

"Very well," he capitulates. "You know I'm useless against your McGraw face. You've tortured me into submission." He is still charmingly pink about the cheeks, and the blush doesn't fade as he goes on. "On the plantation they'd bring us pamphlets. It was all the news of the world we were allowed. Tracts on what crops should be brought to the New World. Foolish screeds about nonsense scientific researches. And pirate gossip."

"About all the pirates, then?" James asks, and Thomas nods.

"Yes," he goes on. "Well, the ones whose raids were bold enough to frighten good Englishmen into writing them down. Or the ones who were caught and had their trials recorded."

"And how did the bold and frightening Captain Flint enter this tale?" James inquires, admirably straight-faced. He is immensely grateful the spectre of Flint no longer haunts him all these years gone.

"Oh, the usual," Thomas replies. "Pillage and plunder and murder and theft. I don't expect a tenth of the stories were true, but..." he tapers off into silence.

James waits him out this time, still clasping their hands together.

At length, Thomas continues, rueful and small. "He liked books, you see." He smiles a little, at James, at himself. "They said he stole books from the ships he took. That part seemed too odd to be a fabrication. It was one detail in one pamphlet or another, and all the other men in the bunkhouse read right past that part, but I... I thought perhaps," here he tips his chin down to stare at their joined hands, "just perhaps, here was a pirate who'd been forced onto the account without truly wanting it. Who had no real taste for bloodshed and thievery. Who'd been dealt such a blow by life or circumstance that he'd come to piracy. But that perhaps what he truly wanted was a place to come home to with a hearth and a bookshelf and a philosophical discussion over a bottle of good wine." His voice has trailed off to a whisper. "And someone who loved him waiting there to share all those things."

James finds he's been holding his breath as Thomas has woven a spell about them.

"It was a fanciful, imagined thing," Thomas goes on, still quiet in the candle's glow. "I always thought, of all the pirates, Flint was the one I'd like to meet. To see what manner of man he truly was. To see if any of it was real."

"Thomas," is all James can manage for a moment. He rises up on his knees and pulls Thomas off the stool into his arms. He strokes his fine, shaggy hair and whispers, "You must have realised by now that you had it entirely right, yes?"

Thomas nods into his neck, his breath huffing out in a small, soundless chuckle that warms James's skin and his heart, both. "Yes, once we were reunited and you told me that you'd been... that you were him, then yes, I rather commended myself for my clairvoyance."

James pulls back, smiling into that beloved, sun-lined face. "Why did you say nothing?"

"You were so troubled by Flint for so long," Thomas says. "It seemed unwise to confess my foolish fancies when he was so clearly a source of horror to you." He shrugs. "And by the time he no longer haunted you, I was rather preoccupied with having you mine again, as you were, as you are now. Flint was gone, and there seemed no purpose to invoking him."

James cannot help that his hands move to hold Thomas's face again. "And now you've found all the logs from his—from _my_ —exploits and you thought..."

Thomas smiles ruefully. "I thought I'd indulge in reviving some of those fancies, yes."

"And that's why you've been down here so many hours reading," James prods.

"Yes," Thomas says.

"Saying not a single word." He takes a breath, then straightens his posture and clasps his hands behind him. He lets a hoarseness into his voice like a man who's been all day shouting orders above crashing waves. "Not a single word, when you could've been speaking with the man himself."

Thomas gasps. Uncertain, surely. Perhaps also excited. James hopes so.

"And tell me, Lord Hamilton," he continues. "Did what you read thrill you?"

Thomas nods once, hesitant but with James's favourite gleam of curiosity about him now.

"Did it make you yearn for me?"

Thomas nods again, and his hesitance evaporates like dew off sunrise sailcloth.

"Did it make your prick hard, to think of me sailing into the wind and spray, chasing down a lazy English merchantman to ravage?"

"James," Thomas gasps again.

James raises one eyebrow; stern, expectant.

A shudder runs over Thomas before he breathes his correction. "Captain."

"There now," James rewards him by wrapping one arm around the curve of his low back and tugging him sharply forward until their bodies collide. "It seems your prick is hard now, my Lord. Whatever shall this... what did you call me earlier?... this 'dreadful brute' do with such a pretty little lordling in his power?"

Thomas is panting outright as he answers, "Do with me as you like, Captain."

And as James takes his mouth in a rough, ragged, domineering kiss, he spares one last thought for the grateful, shocked realisation that Flint—the monster of his past—may yet be something to bring him, to bring them both, some joy.

**Author's Note:**

> Remember how this is canon-compliant? Come rejoice in that fact with me on [Tumblr](http://fand0mfan.tumblr.com).


End file.
